Nearafter (D.E.A.T.H. bk. 1)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sam/Ethan

Before she even realized what she was doing, Samantha had her arms locked around the boy's waist. The boy Ethan had just saved her life and she hadn't been thinking, because if she had, then she would have realized sooner that his uniform was coated in a layer of blood and bits of diced zombie flesh. Immediately, she regretted putting her face on his chest, for two reasons.

The first: along with her clothes, which she would most definitely need to burn when next she had the chance, her face was now also smeared with the aforementioned blood and bits of diced zombie flesh. The second was of course the fact that her arms were around Ethan, was the most intimate that she'd ever been with a boy in her entire life, not to mention the fact that he was still technically a stranger to her and her mother, despite having apparently saved them both.

Needless to say, the awkward embrace was aborted almost as suddenly as its commission. Samantha broke away with a panicked shove, though the boy Ethan didn't move. Nearly tripping over a severed arm, she stumbled, caught herself, but almost slipped again in a puddle of guts. Thankfully, her mother was there to right her in all her graceful floundering. When she finally found her feet again, the red in her face was evident even in the night.

The look on Ethan's face was hard for her to read. It was dark and his hoodie cast an additional shadow over his face, so it was difficult to pick out any specific features. Though judging from the little that he did speak, she got the feeling that he was about her age, maybe a couple grades above her. His uniform, if you could call it that, consisted of black pants and a black hoodie. The word DEATH was printed in small letters on the back and the front left side. Samantha didn't recognize the brand, though she was never really a good contemporary teen anyway, failing to keep up with trends and all the popular fashion of the day.

Her mother put a hand on her shoulder and they hugged again. The boy Ethan had wandered over to the house and he poked around there for a while as Samantha and her mother shared a moment. The moment was brief however, as Ethan returned with his phone in hand. He kept checking the time.

"Do you have service?" Samantha asked him.

He hesitated, for a fraction of a second, but then shook his head.

"No," he said. He slipped the phone into his pocket. "We should probably get out of here."

Samantha stared. She tried willing her gaze to pierce through the shadow of his hood to the face hidden there. He turned his head to stare off into the night. The orange glow from the streetlights caught his face at an angle and she glimpsed pale yet soft, handsome features, wisps of black hair, maybe dark brown, and a hint of blue in his eyes. Her face went flush again. She grabbed the duffel bag from the passenger seat of the truck and then Ms. Davenport and her daughter followed the boy Ethan back down their road into Chalespeak, across Pecan and finally out of Medessi.

There was a roadblock a mile or two out of town. Armed men and women in black and gray military fatigues formed a perimeter around a camp of large green tents. Samantha was at once delighted and disconcerted at the sight. Delighted because she knew now that she and her mother had officially made it out alive but disconcerted to see such a large military presence on the outskirts of a town, her town, still currently being ravaged by things she thought only to exist in movies and video games.

There were still people, her neighbors, her classmates and fellow townies still fighting for their lives, some of them trapped, some of them seriously injured.

With all that was happening in Medessi why was the military still camped outside several miles from its borders? It didn't make sense to her. Then again it wasn't as if no one had responded, she reasoned with herself. They were here after all, weren't they? And she'd just now had been saved by the boy Ethan, and her mother had said that there were a few others out there, helping people. Maybe there were lots of people like Ethan in Medessi right now, escorting survivors to safety.

Except the boy Ethan didn't look at all military, and he was a kid after all, not that much older than herself. Sure, he may have killed those things like someone from right out of the movies but he was still a kid. And all he had was a machete. Where were his guns? If he was in the military, surely, he'd have guns as well, and actual body armor or something. Maybe he had something on underneath that hoodie. She didn't know. But the more she thought about the boy Ethan, the way he'd fought, how he was able to even kill those things, the cluster of tents, and all the armed soldiers guarding them, the more suspect of the whole thing she became.

"How did you know this place was here?" she asked as they came within shouting distance of the armed guards at the entrance to the camp. The boy Ethan shrugged but offered no real reply.

"You'll be safe here," he said.

The guards, two men, had come forth with their assault rifles slung behind their backs. They held up a hand to stop them, and then flashed pen lights in each of their faces.

"They're fine," Ethan said. "I've already checked them."

But the men ignored him.

"Checked us for what?" Samantha asked, blinking away the spots in her vision.

"You'll be safe here," the boy Ethan said again.

Samantha eyeballed him warily. Her mother's arm, which had been draped across Samantha's shoulders since their reunion, tensed, and her hold tightened as she pulled her daughter in somehow closer than she already was.

"Why do you keep saying that?" her mother asked.

The boy Ethan glanced to the two men and they nodded. Some silent exchange had just happened. Ethan drew his machete, he turned around, and began back down the road, back to Medessi.

Samantha stared after him.

She watched the darkness swallow him feeling as if she and her mother were now somehow less safe. She hadn't seen his face, he'd gone out of his way to avoid looking directly at them, but she'd felt the stilted way that he'd moved, almost indecisively, as if he wasn't so sure of his decision to bring them here. Maybe he'd made a mistake. Maybe she and her mother were making one, too. There was no one way to know for sure. The entire situation was off, somehow. Samantha kept wondering to herself... what didn't he tell us...?